American Tower to Buy Tim Celular Brazil Towers for About $1.2 Billion

   By Josh Beckerman 
 

American Tower Corp., which operates wireless and broadcast towers, agreed to buy two Brazil tower portfolios from Tim Celular SA for about 3 billion Brazilian reais, or about $1.2 billion.

Tim Celular is part of Tim Participações, a unit of Telecom Italia SpA.

Earlier Friday, Telecom Italia said it would explore options to integrate Tim Participações with Oi SA. Oi, the Brazilian telecom provider, said in August that it hired Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual to look at potential deals including a possible acquisition of Tim Participações.

American Tower said one portfolio includes about 5,240 towers. The second portfolio consists of about 1,240 towers, which are subject to certain preemptive acquisition rights by third parties.

The deal is expected to close during the first half of 2015. The towers in the deal are expected to generate about $171 million in annual run rate revenue.

American Tower, which operates as a real-estate investment trust, said third-quarter revenue rose 28% to $1.04 billion as the company continued to benefit from "unabated" adoption of advanced mobile products and services. The company has about 70,000 communications sites.

Write to Josh Beckerman at [e-mail]

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